LATEST UPDATE: OCTOBER 2004 67 Academies of sciences which signed the Statement on human cloning which IAP released in September 2003 were contacted again in August 2004 and asked to send a copy of the IAP Statement to the appropriate officials in their government and inform them of the position adopted by the global assembly of science academies. The statement called for a global ban on reproductive cloning, and urged that policy on cloning for research or therapeutic purposes should be left to individual countries to determine according to their own circumstances. The UN Sixth Committee will revisit this topic again this month (October) and a vote on this issue is provisionally scheduled for October 20/21. The updated statement which includes additional signatories from the IAP membership since 2003, can be downloaded in pdf format in the following languages: English French Spanish Italian Portuguese December 2003: IAP reiterates its support for therapeutic cloning .... link to press release September 2003: More than 60 science academies, members of IAP, from every continent in the world have called on the United Nations to adopt a ban on human reproductive cloning. The IAP statement was issued on 22 September 2003. In the same statement, however, the science academies say that therapeutic cloning should be exempt from the ban. IAP members will present the statement to delegates of the UN Committee on Cloning, scheduled to meet at UN headquarters in New York City between September 29 and 3 October. The Committee has examined the possibility of issuing a declaration that endorses a ban on cloning. Consensus, however, has been hampered by disagreements concerning the scope of such a ban, especially whether the ban should apply to research and therapeutic cloning. Since 22 September, four more IAP members have endorsed the statement: Academy of Sciences of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Academy of Sciences and Arts of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Union of German Academies of Sciences and Humanities, and Akademi Sains Malaysia. That brings the total number of signatories to 67. Press releases are also available, as pdf files, in: English French Spanish Italian Portuguese